lished in May 2010, mentions the Americas poetically — he writes of developing allies “from the Americas to Africa; from the Middle East to Southeast Asia”—but devotes little attention to specific cases. His 2011 State of the Union address made but one reference to the Americas; rather than discuss policy, he simply announced an intention to travel to the region. And although Obama’s immediate priority for the hemisphere was reinstating a special...
d energy; Bush seemed reluctant to tap it. To his credit, the President eventually did summon up both a rhetoric and a policy of national service that seemed commensurate to the nation’s desires, unveiling in his State of the Union address in January 2002 a new umbrella organization for federal service programs, the USA Freedom Corps, and a proposed 50 percent expansion of AmeriCorps, the largest of the existing programs. But some of that initial...
ferent states who are now representing all congressional districts, and monitoring the behavior of their elected representatives. One of our co-founders generated the idea for the bipartisan seating at the [2011] State of the Union, which No Labels strongly endorsed and supported. Today in Washington, we had a press conference at the Capitol calling for everything to be on the table with everybody at the table as we address the budget issues. Add...
Illustration by Anne Park In his January 25, 2011 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama identified the unsolved issue of illegal immigration as an obstacle to winning the future. Referring to the recently blocked DREAM Act, which would have offered children of undocumented immigrants the opportunity to attain legal status, he called for an end to the expulsion of “talented, responsible young people… who could be further enric...
rection” is, indeed, very visible: “We are the nation that saved liberty in Europe and liberated death camps and helped raise up democracies and faced down an evil empire,” he told the American people in his 2006 State of the Union Address. “Once again, we accept the call of history.” For all that the President invoked a glorious American past, however, he also spoke of a profound rupture in history. “On September 11,” the President declared, “ni...
make that announcement tomorrow, and he wouldn’t exactly run up against the limits of technical or political feasibility. In fact, he has already admitted as much.When arguing for clean energy initiatives in his State of the Union, he alluded to how limited NASA’s capabilities were when JFK announced the Apollo program. The reference was not entirely off the mark—America was very far away from putting a man on the moon in 1961, and America is ve...
presidential race seems to be coalescing into a two-man race between Gingrich and Mitt Romney. The lead-up to the Florida primary will even more contentious and ugly than South Carolina, with President Obama’s State of the Union address simply adding fuel to the fire. Gingrich will foam at the mouth, Romney will try to find a spine (and his tax returns), Rick Santorum will stagger on as the conservative alternative to the alternative, and Gran...
In an effort to recast himself as a “compassionate conservative,” President Bush often invokes HIV/AIDS relief as a key component of his foreign policy. Amid a history of strong-armed diplomacy, this altruistic endeavor is distinct. Launched during the 2003 State of the Union, “The President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief” (PEPFAR) garnered rousing bipartisan applause and was awarded legislative authorization just three months later. At $15 bi...
ation, increasing incomes and general economic growth. Whammy. Bush told us that Saddam Hussein had been pursuing WMDs and looking to enrich uranium from Nigeria. They were hot on his trail, said Bush in his 2003 State of the Union, and didn’t want the “smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” That line is scary: I’m wary. And rightfully so. Jackson and Jamieson told me to watch for glittering generalities, like Kerry’s promise to protect the taxes o...
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